THOUGHTS ON THE DESCRIPTION, SPELLING AND PRONUNCIATION OF THE OMICRON VARIANT OF THE CORONAVIRUS IN TURKISH

Abstract

It has nearly been three years since the Coronavirus broke out in China and spread across the world and infected millions of people, young and old. Many people, who got infected, have lost their lives or experienced permanent or temporary health problems. 2019 was the start of the Covid-19 era and terms such as ‘Coronavirus, variant, mutations, subvariants’ entered our languages.

The World Health Organization has named the virus ‘Covid-19’ and provided information to the globe about its symptoms, its effects on people’s health, ways of treatment and suggested measures of protection on the national and regional levels. Covid-19 and its variants have received massive media coverage. In the field of medicine, research, healthcare settings, and media, Covid-19-related vocabulary was used frequently. Likewise, the focus of this paper-Omicron, the latest Covid-19 variant, entered our languages.

The World Health Organization registered the pandemic as Covid-19, referring to the year of its outbreak. Covid-19 has mutated many times from its outbreak until 2022, and all variants have been given names. The main variants have been Alpha, identified in the UK in September 2020, Beta, identified in South Africa in September 2020, Delta, identified in India in September 2020, Gamma, identified in Brazil in January 2020, and finally, in November 2021, Omicron was identified in South Africa and became the latest variant which was defined as the most contagious one. The variant ‘Omicron’ was named after the fifteenth letter in the Greek alphabet. All the main variants have had their own subvariants.

Although there is common lexis about the Omicron variant, which has become a new term in the world, there seems to be no study in Türkiye. Perhaps that is why no definition has been made about Omicron in print and electronic dictionaries in Türkiye, furthermore, there is no spelling of it into the Turkish language yet. It seems to be left to confidentiality agreements.

In the outbreak of pandemics and epidemics, it is believed that linguists on national and regional levels should define the disease-related term/s, and the terms need to be spelled into other languages. In order to formulate accurate definitions of terminology, AND accurate spelling, professionals in the field of medicine, microbiology, experts in the field of infectious diseases, and linguists need to co-work.